The University of Sydney: Sydney eScholarship Journals online
Not a member yet
10041 research outputs found
Sort by
Telehealth and the new normal: using electronic patient data to study its impacts on care activities within general practice during the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textTitle: Telehealth and the new normal: using electronic patient data to study its impacts on care activities within general practice during the COVID-19 pandemic
Background: Telehealth has provided a practical mode of care delivery in Australian general practice since its rapid implementation in 2020. While widely utilised, limited data exists on how telehealth has impacted general practice activities. This may impact on the delivery and quality of care
Aims: To investigate several facets of telehealth in general practice: general practitioners’ perspectives, medication prescribing rates, diagnostic testing, utilisation in residential aged care facilities (RACFs), and care for chronic conditions (e.g., diabetes and mental health).
Methods: Mixed methods study including qualitative ‘Action Research’ focus groups, and quantitative retrospective observational study of routinely-collected electronic patient data from 807 general practices across New South Wales and Victoria, comparing periods before (from January 2019) and after the March 2020 introduction of MBS telehealth funding.
Results: Telehealth has had several key benefits for general practice, including access to care for RACF residents, high uptake for monitoring of Type 2 diabetes patients, and practice benefits (funding and safety). Potential barriers included quality of care (lower pathology referral and prescribing rates, quality of antibiotic prescribing) and technology (lower video uptake). A key factor was evolution of telehealth, which has been driven by adaptations to changes and MBS funding.
Conclusions: This study emphasises the importance of several key areas where telehealth can deliver the greatest value (chronic disease monitoring, access to care) as well as factors that should be considered for quality improvement, from infrastructure to workflows (pathology ordering, medication prescribing, technology barriers, funding changes). These lessons learnt may improve digital care delivery
Peer-support mobile app for adolescent mental health prevention
No full textBackground: While mental health apps and online programs have proliferated, there is a lack of evidence-based online interventions aiming to upskill adolescents around supporting peers in relation to mental health and/or substance use.
Aims: To develop and trial the ‘Mind your Mate’ program, a brief classroom lesson and smartphone app for adolescents (aged 15-16 years) targeting peer support around anxiety, depression, and substance use.
Methods: The program was collaboratively designed by young people and aims to upskill and empower adolescents to better support their peers around mental health and substance use. It is a self-guided program, providing adolescents with normative information about mental health and substance use, facilitating checking in with friends and encouraging help-seeking.
A cluster RCT was run during the first wave of the COVID pandemic. Primary outcomes included substance use and mental health knowledge, use of alcohol and drugs, anxiety and depression symptoms. Outcomes will be analysed using mixed-effects linear regression and mixed-effects logistic regression.
Results: The program is currently being evaluated in 12 Sydney secondary schools, with n=400 student. 12-month follow-up data will be available from June 22 and outcomes results will be presented at the conference. Preliminary analyses demonstrate an app registration rate of 13.5%, a 3-minute average engagement time, and 49 users accessing 1.6 education modules on average.
Conclusions: It is anticipated that compared to the control condition, students who receive the intervention will show delayed uptake of substance use and less mental ill health
Acting, Anxiety and Authenticity: Performing Affective Labour in Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal (2022)
Full text link
This article investigates ways of performing affective labour as presented in the docu-comedy series The Rehearsal by Nathan Fielder. In reading The Rehearsal through the lens of affective labour, this article examines in what ways the cultural and economic value placed on performing authentic emotion has become a cause for anxiety in and around the modern workplace. Throughout the show, Nathan attempts to manage other’s emotions, as well as his own; but he constantly doubts whether the moments of intimacy he is creating are truly authentic. The show illustrates the feelings of alienation that come with the commercialisation of affect and the breaking down of divisions between the public and the private. The show uses the mise-en-scene to create an alienation effect (as conceptualised by Brecht), causing the viewer to question where the line between real and artificial lies. Fielder's show creates an environment reflective of neoliberal labour markets, in which there is no exteriority to work. This problematises the possibility to return to an authentic subjectivity outside the labouring self. 
The impact of a virtual laboratory tour on affective domain of first-year chemistry students
Full text linkThe affective domain, in particular students’ attitude and self-efficacy, is an important factor for educators to consider as they are linked to students’ overall success in a subject (Flaherty, 2020). The following presentation will describe the design, implementation, and impact of a 360-degree virtual laboratory tour. The purpose of this was to improve students’ familiarity within the laboratory by showing them where their classes would take place and the equipment they would be using in order to improve their feelings towards the chemistry laboratory. To measure the impact of this resource we designed a pre-post-test study where students were surveyed before and after they used the resource. As students’ attitudes towards chemistry and self-efficacy were of interest the Attitude toward the Subject of Chemistry Inventory v2 (ASCIv2; Xu & Lewis, 2011) and a modified version of the College Chemistry Self-Efficacy Scale (CCSS; Uzuntiryaki & Çapa Aydın, 2009) were used. It was determined that students who used the resource (N = 40) had an increase in self-efficacy however there was no change in students’ attitude. A majority of students who used the virtual laboratory tour said they used it to gain familiarity with the laboratory. This study will discuss the success and failures of virtual laboratory tours and the journey to create an effective tour for first year chemistry students.
REFERENCES
Flaherty, A. A. (2020). A review of affective chemistry education research and its implications for future research. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 21(3), 698-713.
Uzuntiryaki, E., & Çapa Aydın, Y. (2009). Development and validation of chemistry self-efficacy scale for college students. Research in Science Education, 39, 539-551.
Xu, X., & Lewis, J. E. (2011). Refinement of a chemistry attitude measure for college students. Journal of Chemical Education, 88(5), 561-568
My experience with “ungrading” a large first-year physics course
Full text linkThe COVID-19 pandemic gave us an opportunity to rethink assessment. At the University of New South Wales (UNSW) pass/fail grading, which was retired in the 1970s, was brought back as an option for courses. In this grading scheme students do not get a mark, they get SY if they are successful or FL if they do not meet the requirements. Another change that occurred in the wake of the pandemic were that large courses (over 400) were no longer allowed end of term invigilated exams. The pandemic occurred the year after UNSW had moved to a three-term calendar, significantly reducing time between terms, hence making marking exams and running supplementary exams a challenge.
In response to these factors, I have changed the way we assess students in Physics 1A. Physics 1A is a large, 1700 students per year, introductory physics course that caters predominantly for engineering and science students. In 2020, the course adopted pass/fail grading with no other changes, apart from no invigilation, to the assessment structure: tests, labs and a final exam. In 2023, when we could expect students to be on campus, the assessment structure was changed to comprise of three hurdle tasks: two invigilated tests, and lab, with pass/fail grading remaining in place. The students could attempt the tests up to three times as they gained understanding. The students sit the tests online in the first-year physics laboratory, the automatic marking of the tests means that this new model does not have an adverse impact on staff workloads.
My pedagogical reasoning behind these changes to assessment is that students have been trained through high school to measure their academic success through the grades that they receive. There is increasing evidence that a fixed mindset, where students believe that grades measure how smart they are, gets in the way of learning and growth (Fernandez, 2021). There is also evidence that grades in first-year physics are predominantly a measure of privilege (Salehi et. al., 2019). Students who enter university well prepared by good high school teachers, and who consequently scored well in Higher School Certificate physics and mathematics, obtain higher grades in our courses and at similar courses in other institutes. Good assessment should give students a chance to learn from their mistakes. In this model students can practice the questions in advance, they are pulled from a large bank of over 200 three-part questions for the course, receiving constructive feedback on their attempts. If they do not pass the test the first or second time, they have at least one week to study before re-attempting it. The invigilation discourages students from applying academically dishonest assessment practices and teaches them good study habits in their first year. My experience introducing this change has been over-whelming positive: positive feedback from students in end of term surveys and during term from course representatives; a high level of student engagement with the formative tasks and forums; students are still achieving high scores on the summative tests (even though only a pass is required); no cases referred to the misconduct unit; and a lower workload for staff. I plan to roll out this same model to other first-year courses.
REFERENCES
Fernandez, O. E. (2021). Second chance grading: An equitable, meaningful, and easy-to-implement grading system that synergizes the research on testing for learning, mastery grading, and growth mindsets. Primus, 31(8), 855-868.
Salehi, S., Burkholder, E., Lepage, G. P., Pollock, S., & Wieman, C. (2019). Demographic gaps or preparation gaps?: The large impact of incoming preparation on performance of students in introductory physics. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 15(2), 020114
Real-world connections to sustainability: Using authentic learning activities to introduce students to systems thinking through green chemistry
Full text linkSystems thinking refers to approaches to learning that emphasise the interdependence of components in dynamic systems and how they interact and influence one another (Mahaffy et al., 2019). Applying systems thinking to green chemistry teaching and learning can create a molecular basis for sustainability (Mahaffy et al., 2019) that is able to enhance undergraduate chemistry students’ multidimensional understanding of complex sustainability challenges (Smith, 2011). However, efforts to introduce sustainable systems thinking – specifically within first-year introductory chemistry courses – are particularly challenging, and past approaches have produced mixed success (Mahaffy et al., 2019; An et al., 2021). Consequently, this indicates an opportune space within undergraduate chemistry education research to explore alternative and multidisciplinary approaches towards teaching green chemistry and sustainability (Wissinger et al., 2021).
In this research, we present the preliminary results of a trimester-long intervention using authentic learning activities to introduce first-year chemistry students to systems thinking, through the application of green chemistry concepts. To determine the effectiveness of the intervention, we are using a mixed-methods research design to assess the impact of the learning activities on students’ development of systems thinking skills. Student motivations and attitudes towards the subject of chemistry will also be evaluated via validated survey instruments (Guay et al., 2000; Liu et al., 2017). The learning activities have been designed and developed successfully, though the delivery of the intervention is currently ongoing. Preliminary results indicate that students are excited to learn about how chemistry can be more sustainable, and that they are engaging with the learning activities.
The aim of this research is to provide rigorous evidence for using systems thinking as a tool to teach students about green chemistry, ‘future-proofing’ chemistry in a way that is relevant, meaningful, and authentic for today’s chemistry students. Outcomes from our data analysis will help inform the development of new undergraduate chemistry education curricula that align with contemporary sustainable challenges.
REFERENCES
An, J., Loppnow, G.R., & Holme, T. A. (2021). Measuring the impact of incorporating systems thinking into general chemistry on affective components of student learning. Canadian Journal of Chemistry, 99(8), 698–705.
Fisher, M.A. (2019). Systems thinking and educating the heads, hands, and hearts of chemistry majors. Journal of Chemical Education, 96(12), 2715–2719.
Guay, F., Vallerand, R. J., & Blanchard, C. (2000). On the assessment of situational intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: The Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS). Motivation and emotion, 24(3), 175–213.
Liu, Y., Ferrell, B., Barbera, J., & Lewis, J. E. (2017). Development and evaluation of a chemistry-specific version of the academic motivation scale (AMS-Chemistry). Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 18(1), 191–213.
Mahaffy, P. G., Matlin, S. A., Holme, T. A., & MacKellar, J. (2019). Systems thinking for education about the molecular basis of sustainability. Nature Sustainability, 2(5), 362–370.
Smith, T. (2011). Using critical systems thinking to foster an integrated approach to sustainability: A proposal for development practitioners. Environment, development and sustainability, 13, 1–17.
Wissinger, J. E., Visa, A., Saha, B. B., Matlin, S. A., Mahaffy, P. G., Kümmerer, K., & Cornell, S. (2021). Integrating sustainability into learning in chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 98(4), 1061–1063
Integrating computation through first- and second-year physics major units
Full text linkCOMPUTATION AS A TARGET FOR PHYSICS INSTRUCTION
Computation is increasingly recognized as a core aspect of physics practice and target for physics instruction. Literature on computation in physics often focuses on separate computational physics units or courses (see Atherton, 2023, for a review) rather than integrating computation throughout curricula. We document the process of integrating computation in the context of first- and second-year physics units at Monash University to provide a model for embedding computation throughout a three-year Australian Bachelor of Science in physics.
GOALS FOR COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS INSTRUCTION AT MONASH
Naturally, computational physics instruction aims to develop a solid foundation of the coding skills that students will require in their careers and to develop literacy with a chosen language. However, we set out more importantly and broadly, to develop the skills needed to break down a task into its separate steps and develop an algorithm (free of syntax) and to develop student’s ability to create interactive visualisations and models, in order to augment their understanding of various physical phenomena. This approach enhances engagement by showcasing the benefits of computational approaches and augments learning through linking interesting phenomena and the coding process.
IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPUTATIONAL ACTIVITIES IN APPLIED AND LABORATORY ACTIVITIES
Our vertical integration of computational skills begins in first year, where primarily we focus on developing coding skills in support of laboratory data analysis. Here, the activities begin with a basic introduction to coding in the chosen language (originally the Wolfram Language in Mathematica, and currently Python) tailored to lab analysis (plotting, fitting, error analysis). Subsequent tasks build upon this, supported by a mix of examples and exercises that ask students to follow along, modify previously used code, or fill in gaps in templates for each laboratory they complete. This approach is followed in second year with the applications broadened tremendously into fortnightly sessions that serve to create fully interactive demonstrations/visualisations of the physics discussed in other aspects of the unit. These include creating time evolutions of wavefunctions for the common quantum tunnelling problems, visualizations of random walks, manipulable ray traces, and much more. Through this, students not only learn a variety of coding techniques and principles but see very interesting and often hard to imagine aspects of physics come to life through their code!
EVALUATING THE SUCCESS OF COMPUTATIONAL INSTRUCTION
We assess our success in achieving both computational and physics learning outcomes, as well as enhance engagement, based on feedback provided annually by students in their evaluations of teaching units, on its follow through in higher year level units, and on the difference in achievement in the unit as a whole for years/students where computational applied sessions have been attended, in comparison to those cases where applied sessions were not offered or not attended.
REFERENCE
Atherton, T. J. (2023). Resource Letter CP-3: Computational physics. American Journal of Physics, 91(1), 7-27
Examining links between students’ mental imagistic abilities and their perceptions of chemical representations
Full text linkIt is a long-held pervasive belief that for a student to gain expertise in chemistry, they must be able to mentally visualise molecular phenomena (Zare, 2002; Kozma & Russell, 2005; Gkitzia et al., 2020). In recent years however the term “aphantasia” has been popularised to describe individuals lacking visual mental imagery and is believed to characterise 2-5% of the population (Zeman et al., 2015). Furthermore, research has been conducted to explore and understand the distinction between ‘visual’ and ‘spatial’ imagery (Blazhenkova, 2016; Pounder et al., 2021). Those who can visualise images typically associate visual mental imagery with spatial mental manipulations, yet paradoxically aphantasia has been found to be overrepresented in math and science occupations (Zeman, 2021).
As part of a research higher degree project, several research questions are under consideration: Do students with and without visual imagery perform differently in chemistry related tasks? How do students without visual imagery solve problems that are ‘normally’ achieved using it? Is a bias towards teaching methods that utilise visual imagery detrimental to students that lack it? Should instructors move away from the notion that it is essential for students to be able to create visual mental models? Or instead, would it be necessary to provide additional support for those who cannot?
In this presentation the findings from a pilot study addressing several of the above questions will be discussed. I will examine some specific outcomes from the performance of 18 first-year chemistry students who possessed a range of visualisation abilities as they completed eight tasks related to chemistry and visualisation. I will also discuss how my findings intend to guide the future of the project.
REFERENCES
Blazhenkova, O. (2016). Vividness of object and spatial imagery. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 122 (2), 490-508.
Kozma, R. & Russell, J. (2005). Students Becoming Chemists: Developing Representationl Competence. In: Gilbert, J.K. (eds) Visualization in Science Education. Models and Modeling in Science Education, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3613-2_8
Gkitzia, V., Salta, K., & Tzougraki, C. (2020). Students’ competence in translating between different types of chemical representations. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 21(1), 307-330.
Pounder, Z., Jacob, J., Evans, S., Loveday, C., Eardley, A., & Silvanto, J. (2021). Individuals with congenital aphantasia show no significant neuropsychological deficits on imagery-related memory tasks. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gqayt
Zare, R. N. (2002). Visualizing chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 79(11), 1290.
Zeman, A. Z., Dewar, M., & Della Sala, S. (2015). Lives without imagery-Congenital aphantasia. Cortex, 73, 378-380.
Zeman, A. (2021). Blind Mind's Eye. American Scientist Magazine, 109(2), 110-117